Google Play Books to add 13 more countries to its roster

Mobile book readers in 13 countries will soon be able to access and buy ebooks through Google Play Books as Google continues to expand their market, this time in Central, North and South America, plus two more European countries. The new app update will bring a total of 58 countries where the ebooks are available, although its support page doesn't show it yet and will take some time to roll it out.

Last year saw Google Play Books add Southeast Asian and Asia Pacific countries to its roster and now, its catalog of digital books will be available in Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Luxembourg, Nicaragua, Norway (they're now actually live on Play Books), Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay. They will not only be able to access and buy books, but also choose from the catalog of major textbook publishers like Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Macmillan, Pearson, and Wiley as part of Play Books push on education.

Users can also upload their very own PDF and EPUB files on Play Books directly from an Android device. You can use it as a kind of cloud storage so you can access these documents on whatever gadget you use and it also syncs across all devices that uses Google services. They made available that feature late last year, only to pull out the PDF support a week later because the file type was still experimental at that time. Fortunately for users who prefer reading books or documents through PDF, the function was returned a month later.

For those who aren’t too keen on reading a lot of words, or rather, prefer a more visual approach to reading, Google Play Books is also relevant to you as comic books and graphic novels are available in its catalog. DC Comics was the latest to join the Play Books family last April, staring out in the US only but eventually rolling out into other territories as well.